The Division gameplay: first impressions of the Dark Zone, co-op missions, Manhattan, and more

The RPG shooter boasts deep customisation and a brilliantly realised New York open world
Rebuild: The Division tasks players with recovering Manhattan from a biological attack
Ubisoft
Ben Travis16 February 2016

You’re stood at a crossing in the middle of the road. There’s two minutes counting down on the clock. A helicopter’s on its way, but until it arrives you’re hiding behind cover with your three team-mates. There’s a bag of loot on your back. And any second now, someone’s coming to steal it.

Welcome to the Dark Zone, the Wild West area right at the heart of Tom Clancy’s The Division, Ubisoft’s long-awaited RPG shooter.

This central part of the game’s world map, a staggeringly faithful and hugely detailed recreation of Manhattan, is the thing that has piqued so much interest since the game’s announcement – a ‘shared’ online zone where you’ll run into other real life players (MMORPG style) as well as NPCs.

It’s not a separate multiplayer mode, or a level selected from a central menu – it exists right in the centre of the main game, and you can wander in at will.

It’s here that you’ll pick up loot, valuable items and upgrades that you won’t find elsewhere in the game, with the aim to get in, grab some goodies, and export it to your own campaign before another player decides to take it from you and leave you for dead.

You’ll need that loot because of what Manhattan has become.

Ubisoft

The set-up

The Division posits a worryingly plausible future where New York (then America, then the world) has crumbled under the weight of a biological attack, spread rapidly through the exchange of infected bank notes in the Black Friday sales.

As the illness spread, vital services collapsed, and the Big Apple was left vulnerable to gangs and raiders who have made the streets a dangerous place to be.

Enter the organisation of the title – a squadron of elite citizens, ready to come out of hiding when things go south. As a member of The Division, it’s up to the player to try and restore order to the city by completing a variety of missions focusing on three key areas: Medical, Technology, and Security.

The Division's Manhattan - landmarks and street art

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Prepare to customise

At first, stepping into The Division is daunting. Despite its appearances as a shooter, the RPG elements of the game are deeper than you might expect

In the elements available for press to play at a recent event in New York, the initial 15 minutes brought up a somewhat overwhelming array of options and upgrades – skills, talents, perks, weapon modifications, and more.

There’s a chance that these systems will be introduced in a more user-friendly way by the time the game is released to the public – if not, some more casual gamers might feel a bit swamped at first. Still, it promises a degree of customisation that will likely come in handy as players progress through the game.

Ubisoft

While these systems are deep, they don’t come on like a lot of RPGs – unlike other free-roaming games you don’t pick a class that will pre-determine your specialisms for the rest of the game.

Enemies are relatively unforgiving – not as much as in fellow Tom Clancy game Rainbow Six Siege, but enough to make you think twice before just running in

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Instead, completing Medical, Technological, and Security-focused missions allows you to upgrade your skills along each of those three areas as you play, and you select two to equip at any one time. Best of all, your chosen skill can be easily swapped, helping you adapt to the needs of your group, or as a single player. These skills mean that you’ll, say, be able to heal your teammates in a medical role, offer up more sophisticated weaponry as a tech master, or create additional cover points in a firefight with your security skills.

After playing the first few missions, you can tackle the rest in any order you choose – meaning if you want, for example, especially strong Medical skills you can complete those missions first. It’s a fluid approach that should offer a lot of flexibility for how players choose to take on the game.

Ubisoft

Adjusting to shooting

With the RPG elements being so pronounced, they do impact how the shooting works – and this is possibly the most jarring part of The Division to get used to.

There’s a real concerted effort through the game to make a lot of things feel as real as possible. New York’s iconic landscapes are brilliantly recreated and re-purposed to function in a ‘mid-crisis’ scenario – Madison Square Garden, for instance, has been converted into a field hospital – while the genuinely scary bio-attack set-up is worryingly plausible.

However, in order to make the weapon upgrades worth pursuing, the enemies have been turned into bullet sponges. Where a full-on shooter game rewards accurate headshots with instant kills, The Division’s marauding rioters have health counters that take a few blasts to knock down – the better and more upgraded your guns, the more damage they’ll deal out.

It makes sense in a gaming context, but feels at odds with the gritty New York the rest of the game works hard to make convincing – especially when you’ve unloaded three shotgun blasts in an enemy’s chest at close range and they’re still coming at you.

Once you get used to that, combat is a pleasant experience. Snapping from cover to cover, Gears of War-style, feels satisfying, and the enemies are relatively unforgiving – not as much as in fellow Tom Clancy game Rainbow Six Siege, but enough to make you think twice before just running in.

Ubisoft

Welcome to the party, pal

While The Division can be played solo, it’s worth hooking up with your friends – four player co-op proves hugely enjoyable. You’ll want buddies to help you out when you’re at death’s door (they can nip over and revive you within a time limit), while working out how best to flank enemies is all part of the fun.

It's in the Dark Zone where The Division’s unusual mix of genres suddenly clicked into place

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As well as having strength in numbers against enemies, having a team to work with offers more opportunities for strategising – as a group, you can each select a skill to make sure you have well-rounded medical, technical, and security support.

Ubisoft

Expect the unexpected

All of which brings us back to where this started: the Dark Zone.

It’s one place in particular you won’t want to go without a crew in tow. As well as playing host to tougher NPCs, the unpredictable nature of other real-life players who might turn on you at a moment’s notice means that heading in on your own is a bad move.

While the two campaign missions were rewarding and action-packed in their own right, it was in the Dark Zone where The Division’s unusual mix of genres suddenly clicked into place.

Coming across other groups gives you several options and outcomes: you can avoid each other and go your separate ways; you can shoot at them and try to steal their loot, risking going ‘rogue’ and flagging your position to everyone else on the radar; you can sit cautiously and hope that they’re not going to turn on you and steal your loot.

If you meet a straggler, you can invite them into your group – but they could turn on you, leave your squad, and skip off with your swag.

Even if you don’t encounter anyone before you call in a helicopter extraction to export your loot, the two minute wait for it to arrive will feel like a lifetime. The little yellow backpack that indicates you’ve found some goodies might as well be a target on your back.

It’s these moments of tension that make the Dark Zone a really exciting place to be. It’s not all deadly serious, either – for every close encounter, there’ll be a time where a potential threat starts throwing daft gestures your way instead of a hail of bullets. Unless there’s a bit of loot that you especially want to hold on to, the consequences of failure aren’t severe – after dying, players re-spawn just outside the Dark Zone, and can head straight back in to find their companions.

Ubisoft

The wrap-up

In all, there’s a good chance that The Division will be different things to different people.

For some, it’ll be a surprisingly deep open world experience, with an innovatively implemented online environment that keeps bringing up different scenarios based on the way people choose to interact.

To others, it will be a slightly disappointing shooter with too many systems to quickly pick up.

Personally, after sinking a few hours into The Division in four-player co-op, it felt like the game was just starting to reveal itself and fall into place – there’s a lot to learn and get used to, and once it makes sense you’ll be itching to explore what Manhattan has to offer.

Get ready for the collapse.

The Division arrives on Xbox One, PS4, and PC on March 8

Xbox One version was tested. Travel and accommodation for the New York press launch was provided by Ubisoft.

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